Focus Fusion?

[ben m]

Eric, please note my (not yet answered) question about your data:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11117054&postcount=147

I don't see any evidence of small features (other than CCD noise) in the images you seem to be using as the main measurement of your plasmoid size scale. Please explain your image analysis methods and conclusions.

 

[Eric L]

What specific image are you looking at?

 

[ben m]

Phys. Plasmas 19, 032704 (2012), figure 6a.

 

[Eric L]

Note the scale bar. The whole plasmoid--the bright object--is only hundreds of microns across.

 

[ben m]

Note the scale bar. The whole plasmoid--the bright object--is only hundreds of microns across.

No, that's fine, but you have arrows pointing to a purported 60um "filamentary structure" which looks precisely like the CCD noise. If I am reading the text correctly, you're identifying these "filaments" as the "~ 10 turns" of a solenoid from which you calculate the magnetic field?

 

[Reality Check]

What is the cost of pure depleted boron (boron-11)

Boron-10 and boron-11 are easy to separate because they differ in mass by 10%....

You missed the point I am making, Eric L. Your web site makes the claim that the boron for your apparatus can be extracted from seawater but does not mention that this boron is useless. The Boron-10 has to be removed. The current source of pure depleted boron is the nuclear industry, not seawater.
What is the cost of pure depleted boron (boron-11)?
What will be the cost of setting up an industry to extract pure depleted boron from seawater?

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

You missed the point I am making, Eric L. Your web site makes the claim that the boron for your apparatus can be extracted from seawater but does not mention that this boron is useless. The Boron-10 has to be removed. The current source of pure depleted boron is the nuclear industry, not seawater.
What is the cost of pure depleted boron (boron-11)?
What will be the cost of setting up an industry to extract pure depleted boron from seawater?

Not clear that it's essential to remove Boron 10 actually. And, I hope this is obvious, there is no need to extract from seawater, it's already being mined in large quantities.

If I'm reading the order form correctly it can be bought in small quantities at $30/gram.

http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/aldrich/426164?lang=en&region=US

 

[Reality Check]

You can use the same logic with Alfven: “since Alfven devoted a great deal of his career to an unpopular view of cosmology, the rest of his work should be dismissed and the folk who gave him a Nobel prize were stupid.”

Missed this bit about Hannes Alfvén.
We cannot use the same logic because Alfvén was not the chief scientist of a company selling what could be a pipe dream, Eric L.
What actually happened is that Alfvén introduced an credible alternative cosmology (Plasma cosmology) that matched the observations of the time (1960s). It was as valid as the Big Bang theory or Steady State theory. Then along came the discovery of the CMBR - no more Steady State theory and some doubt about Plasma cosmology. 1993 and we find that the CMBR is isotopic to a high degree which by itself invalidates Plasma cosmology. The nail in the coffin is no detection of the predicted X-ray background. More observations over the last 2 decades makes Plasma cosmology even less valid.

 

[Reality Check]

I’m going to switch over to a new thread discussing “Evidence against concordance cosmology” ...

the Plasma Cosmology - Woo or not thread has already been resurrected to discuss your evidence, Eric L. Perhaps you can start be explaining why ignoring the evolution of galaxies does not invalidate your Tolman test paper?

 

[catsmate]

Not clear that it's essential to remove Boron 10 actually. And, I hope this is obvious, there is no need to extract from seawater, it's already being mined in large quantities.
Isotopic separation is expensive. Currently ¹¹B is a waste material from the separation of ¹⁰B which is useful.

If I'm reading the order form correctly it can be bought in small quantities at $30/gram.

http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/aldrich/426164?lang=en&region=US

I see a price of €117 to €380 for a 1.5 gramme sample of ¹¹BO which would correspond to (at best) around €250 per gramme of ¹¹B.

 

[BenBurch]

Cheap for nuclear fuel even at current prices. And I'm pretty sure I could scale this industrially for a 100X reduction in cost. It's amazing how much cheaper things become when you do them in 1000 kg batches.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

Isotopic separation is expensive. Currently ¹¹B is a waste material from the separation of ¹⁰B which is useful.

I see a price of €117 to €380 for a 1.5 gramme sample of ¹¹BO which would correspond to (at best) around €250 per gramme of ¹¹B.

You realize the comma is not a decimal point in the US? The only place I see anything resembling 1.5 on that page is the description "1, 5 g in glass bottle". I think that means 1 >and< 5 gram bottles. From my US location I see prices quoted in dollars. 1G sample: $47.40, 5G sample: 159.00.

 

[ben m]

Cheap for nuclear fuel even at current prices. And I'm pretty sure I could scale this industrially for a 100X reduction in cost. It's amazing how much cheaper things become when you do them in 1000 kg batches.

Yep. Given that it's (almost trivially) economically worthwhile to separate 235UF6 from 238UF6 (<1% mass difference), of course 10B and 11B are worth separating. (<7.7% mass difference assuming borane)

 

[JeanTate]

Note the scale bar. The whole plasmoid--the bright object--is only hundreds of microns across.

No, that's fine, but you have arrows pointing to a purported 60um "filamentary structure" which looks precisely like the CCD noise. If I am reading the text correctly, you're identifying these "filaments" as the "~ 10 turns" of a solenoid from which you calculate the magnetic field?

Eric,

Has there been independent confirmation of the existence of this 60um "filamentary structure"? If so, would you mind giving a reference?

 

[Reality Check]

Not clear that it's essential to remove Boron 10 actually. And, I hope this is obvious, there is no need to extract from seawater, it's already being mined in large quantities.

It is LPP Fusion claims that require these.
That their device will use the aneutronic p + 11B reaction producing (allegedly insignificant) gamma rays and neutrons only from secondary reactions and X-rays from bremsstrahlung,. Fusion of 10B produces neutrons. Thus they have to use as pure as possible H and 11B as their fuel.
And

One of the LPP Fusion claims is "Unlimited energy. If we take boron out of seawater, there is enough boron to last us a billion years at ten time’s current energy production rates." But that contains ~20% of 10B which produces neutrons on fusing.

What I cannot see is any analysis to support their claims. Personally I suspect that extracting boron from seawater and then extracting 11B will be easy and economic. But I am not an expert nor am I selling a hypothetical fusion device.

 

[ben m]

Has there been independent confirmation of the existence of this 60um "filamentary structure"? If so, would you mind giving a reference?

In particular, it'd be helpful if SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE, ideally more recently than 1986, has drawn a cartoon of the 3D field structure that your 0D theory is purported to represent. As far as I can tell (and this is so, so thinly described in your publications) your comments on the 2012 image do not correspond closely to either the 1986 cartoon or to Kubes' account of a turbulence cascade---you seem to invoke solenoid-like stack of tiny filament loops. The magnetic forces here are bizarre---a ring-shaped current pushes itself apart and adjacent rings repel each other, right? This isn't a z-pinch.

 

[Eric L]

Boron is cheap and abundant out of mines right now. If we replace the entire energy consumption of the world with focus fusion, we will be using 10% of current boron production. Getting it from seawater is just for the far future, to show we can’t easily run out (and it can’t be monopolized either.) As I said before, the cross section (or reaction rate ) for the B-10 reaction that produce neutrons is tiny. We don’t have to worry about it. As other posters have pointed out, separation of B-10 from B-11 is easy to do. The high present costs for both the compound decaborane and for B-11 are purely due to small demand and laboratory-scale production. Industrial production is orders of magnitude cheaper. These are now hand-made.

No one else has observed the 60 micron filaments because no one else has the resolution to do so. They are not noise because they are many pixels and the noise is single pixels from x-rays. They are also regularly spaced. However, if you read the paragraph carefully we calculate the magnetic field two independent ways. The lower limit value, (not dependent on the filaments) is expressed as a magnetic energy density, and is 20 MG when expressed as field strength.

 

[Eric L]

The magnetic forces here are bizarre---a ring-shaped current pushes itself apart and adjacent rings repel each other, right? This isn't a z-pinch.

Ben m, please consult some elementary EM text. Currents moving in the same direction attract each other. Faraday discovered this 200 years ago. Adjacent turns of a solenoid attract each other. That is what creates a kink instability.

 

[Reality Check]

Boron is cheap and abundant out of mines right now.

More assertions without evidence do not evoke confidence, Eric L.
The fact is that all of the boron you are talking about is not pure 11B.
The opinions (which I agree with) that separation of 11B from boron is easy does not mean that it is so cheap that you can forget about it as part of the cost analysis of your hypothetical device. As you point out - the current industry caters for laboratory-scale production.

The fact is that the 10B in natural boron will fuse producing neutrons. Repeating a fact less assertion that these specific neutrons are insignificant is useless. Citations to the scientific literature is what turns assertions into science.
Wikipedia is not perfect but: Residual radiation from a p–11B reactor

Detailed calculations show that at least 0.1% of the reactions in a thermal p–11B plasma would produce neutrons, and the energy of these neutrons would account for less than 0.2% of the total energy released.[33]
...
In addition to neutrons, large quantities of hard X-rays will be produced by bremsstrahlung, and 4, 12, and 16 MeV gamma rays will be produced by the fusion reaction
...
With careful design, it should be possible to reduce the occupational dose of both neutron and gamma radiation to operators to a negligible level.[citation needed] The primary components of the shielding would be water to moderate the fast neutrons, boron to absorb the moderated neutrons, and metal to absorb X-rays. The total thickness needed should be about a meter, most of that being water.[36]

So FPP Fusion are the only people in the world with the apparatus to resolve "60 micron filaments". The question then becomes - what analysis have you done to show that the images actually show plasmoids?
E.g. What distinguishes a plasmoid from a fluctuation in density?

 

[ben m]

Ben m, please consult some elementary EM text. Currents moving in the same direction attract each other. Faraday discovered this 200 years ago. Adjacent turns of a solenoid attract each other. That is what creates a kink instability.

(facepalm) Right on one axis, wrong on the other. Solenoids blow themselves apart radially but, you're right, crush themselves axially.

ETA: amusingly, I recently assigned the radial-force-direction question (which is the only one in an infinite solenoid) to an E&M class.